Apple iPad (2017)

Metascore

TechSpot Metascore

Excellent:

27

Good:

18

Average:

2

Bad:

1

If you want a pure tablet experience, the iPad platform delivers the best overall package. That's why we picked the iPad Air 2 to top our Best Tablets feature this past holidays. However, Apple's iPad for 2017 delivers a weird combination of a more affordable price tag at the expense of a slightly thicker and heavier tablet (it's almost identical to the first-gen Air). This new iPad gets a faster A9 SoC though, so combine that with excellent battery life and you get a great all-around tablet that costs less than ever before.

Expert reviews and ratings

So how does the new iPad perform?Thanks to the A10 Fusion processor, the new iPad is markedly faster than last year's model. Take a look at the graphs below. It was about 15% faster on SunSpider and scored over 27% more on 3DMark.Even so, the new iPad...

The same price as last year's model but now with Apple Pencil support, the sixth-generation iPad is the best midrange tablet choice for most people. But it's still less practical than Chromebooks for most...

This iPad offers a solid, consistent tablet experience at the lowest price we've seen from Apple in a new, full-size tablet.In essence, it answers the question for those with dying 2-3 year old iPads who want to know what they should upgrade to, without...

We've heard this described as the iPad: Education Edition; you might also think of it as the iPhone 5c of Apple's tablet range. However you put it, this is an unexpectedly cheap offering, but one that is also generally low-specced and has a design...

Overall, the 2017 iPad is a very solid tablet that ticks all the right boxes. It has a nice and crisp Retina display, solid build quality, the iconic iPad Air 1 design and truly superb battery life. In fact, it is one of the few devices whose battery...

New iPad 9.7-inch – Battery life Even though the iPad 9.7-inch has a bigger 32.9w battery, Apple still states it'll last the same 10 hours of video watching per charge as both iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro 9.7-inch. Apple's claims seem to match my own...

This feels very much like a bare-bones iPad update. It's Apple simply doing a bit of housekeeping: dropping the ‘Air' label, fitting in a fresh engine and streamlining a well-established product. There's nothing here that we've not seen before.However,...

A few minutes after the Eurostar train pulled out of King's Cross station in London and began its two-hour journey to Brussels, I grabbed my iPad out of my bag. I opened the Kindle app and read a few chapters of Call for the Dead, John le Carré's first...